Dario Zuljani sat in a hospital bed in October with a series of sutures holding together his cracked sternum.

Doctors had repaired clogged arteries in his heart, using healthy blood vessels pulled from his leg.

"It was a quadruple bypass, four arteries, my doctors were the very best," Zuljani said in his Italian-Croatian lilt, tapping at the long scar running beneath the breast of his chef's coat.

"I spent five days at Health Park, five days recovering."

That time gave Zuljani and his wife, Alice, a chance to reflect. They opened Ariani, one of Cape Coral's oldest fine-dining Italian restaurants, 28 years ago. Before that they had Dario's. And before that Zuljani cooked the classic dishes of his homeland in downtown Fort Myers.

He has spent more than 50 years cooking, aboard passenger ships departing from his native Istria, at resorts and in some of the best restaurants in Manhattan. With Ariani, the Zuljanis have a restaurant that runs itself. Their team of chefs has 57 years of combined experience. Their most loyal regulars come back weekly, sometimes more.

Zuljani is 68, and thanks to his recent surgery he has a heart that should last him, "at least 25 more years," Zuljani said. "I've got to make the most of it."

And so, Ariani is on the market — sort of.

Ariani opened in Cape Coral in 1989.(Photo: Annabelle Tometich/The News-Press)

"It would have to be just right," Alice Zuljani said. "When we find the right person, the right situation, the perfect fit, then we will consider selling. But there is no rush."

The Zuljanis own the building and want Ariani's legacy to remain.

Tonight a group of chefs will honor that legacy, teaming with the Cape Coral Police Athletic League to give Chef Dario a lifetime-achievement award during Italian Feast at the Cape Coral Yacht Club.

"I will try to be humble, but humble doesn't look good on me," Dario said, smiling.

"I have lived in Cape Coral for 42 of its 60 years. Everywhere I go I tell people how amazing this city is. I am its number one goodwill ambassador. I always will be. This is our home."

Finding that home, though, took some work.

Coming to America

In 1970 Dario and Alice found themselves in a cramped Queens apartment with a baby on the way.

They'd escaped the communist regime of the former Yugoslavia, leaving their hometown of Labin, in what is now Croatia, to live in a United Nations refugee facility in the more stable Italian border city of Trieste.

Dario had an aunt and uncle in New York. His family sponsored him and his young wife for asylum as soon as they could.

"We got our green cards when we landed at JFK, just like that. Then I had to figure out what to do," Dario said. "I decided cooking. That's what I knew."

He worked in white-tablecloth restaurants in Manhattan and at the famed Bamonte's in Brooklyn. Alice joined him in the industry, waiting tables so they could share the same hours and spend time together with their daughter, Susan.

They became U.S. citizens on July 3, 1976, "one day shy of the bicentennial birthday," Dario said, proudly puffing his chest.

A few months earlier, on a bitterly miserable January day, Dario was having a tough time in the kitchen. He was tired and overworked and cold. He had thrown a soup pot across the room when the restaurant's accountant asked what was the matter.

The accountant called his bluff, asking where he'd go in Florida. Dario didn't know. But the accountant had an idea: an up and coming new city called Cape Coral. He took Dario to the dining room to show him where Cape Coral was on the U.S. maps printed on the restaurant's placemats. He gave Dario the number for a real estate developer.

Five days later the Zuljanis were touring newly built homes near the Yacht Club, move-in ready and just $36,000.

Dario put a date on his calendar: September 11, 1976.

"I said, 'We're coming here that day, before it gets too cold again. And we did."

Making a movement

In 1976 Cape Coral didn't have much in the way of jobs.

Dario worked in downtown Fort Myers, at an Italian-themed restaurant in the old Regency Hotel at the corner of First and Lee streets. The menu was mostly Italian-American stuff — spaghetti, lasagna, ravioli. Dario introduced the kitchen to eggplant rollatini, osso bucco, fresh-pulled mozzarella.

"We had come from the big city and he brought recipes that no one knew yet down here," Alice said. "Everyone loved them. Next thing you know, that place has eggplant rollatini, and then that place has eggplant rollatini."

Alice said she went from making $100 a night waiting tables in Manhattan to $5 a night in Fort Myers. They lived in Cape Coral and grew tired of the drive over the bridge. The Cape was growing. The Zuljanis thought the city was ready for a higher-end Italian restaurant. They knew they were ready to work for themselves.

In 1982, they opened Dario's in the Coral Pointe Shopping Center. They moved across the street in 1989. They renamed the restaurant Ariani, an abbreviated contraction of Dario and Zuljani. They kept its focus on gracious customer service with a continental, Northern Italian menu crafted by the nuanced hands of this lifelong chef.

"I believe we didn't create a restaurant, we created a movement," Dario said.

Filet mignon Wellington from Ariani Ristorante in Cape Coral.(Photo: Special to The News-Press)

"We have been catering to these beautiful guests of ours for 36 years. You know how we lose a customer? To death. They don't leave us until the Lord takes them away."

Dario also has trouble getting away from Ariani.

It's not because the restaurant needs him. He and Alice say it runs like a well-oiled machine. It's because he's like a proud father who wants to be at it his child's side as it steps out on its own.

That's why the Zuljanis need to sell the place, so Dario can try to slow down and take better care of himself.

Since his open-heart surgery, Dario has shed 20 pounds and is, for the first time in his life, exercising. He's cut down on his white-wine spritzers, "from two bottles a day, to just one," he said, laughing. He's eliminated sweets from his diet and is working on eating more fresh fruits and vegetables.

He hopes to continue traveling, to wineries in Napa and to visit his family back in Labin. To do so he and Alice need to find the right buyers, who can take care of Ariani as they do.

"Every day, I swear to God, I walk into this restaurant and I say the same thing: Hello to the very best restaurant in the world!" Dario said, his voice booming off Ariani's walls, walls still hand-painted with his own murals of the Istrian coast.

"You come in here and it's not, 'Hey, yo folks.' It's not, 'Yo, what's up guys.' It's, 'Good evening ladies and gentleman.' On the way out it's, 'Sincere farewell.' And if it's someone's birthday, the whole staff comes around and you sing your heart out. That's how you do a birthday at Ariani."

And then there are the little things.

"Seinfeld" had yada-yada and Dario has la-la-la, the three notes he sings when running from one table to another, or when glossing over of a story he doesn't think needs detail. "I had a falling out with my partner at Dario's. There was a lawsuit and, la-la-la, we opened Ariani across the street."

Dario Zuljani is the chef-owner of Ariani in Cape Coral.(Photo: Annabelle Tometich/The News-Press)

If he likes someone he calls them "chiefy." If he's wrangling a deal he calls people "boss."

Dario and Alice married when they were just teenagers. All these decades later, he says he loves her now more than ever. She feels the same way.